


October 15th, 1893

by Jaydeemz



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Abuse of Power, Angst, Gen, Voxphones, a dark spin on the night Robert entered Columbia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:58:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydeemz/pseuds/Jaydeemz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosalind did not ask Comstock for permission to let Robert cross to their dimension, and the prophet's sympathy is null. As the Luteces fight against the flow of their own blood, Comstock sits back and laughs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	October 15th, 1893

“October 16th, 1893…” Rosalind Lutece’s voice drifted off, and she glanced at the ornate grandfather clock through the semi-darkness. Slowly, she reached for the voxphone before she pressed a button. The action stopped the recording; it was pure luck, for her eyes were still fixed on the other side of the room. Her fingertips trailed over the cold buttons before she started anew. 

The ticking of the clock was almost drowned out by the rain slapping at the windows. A flash of lightning was followed by an ominous rumble of thunder and — her head throbbed — her throat was dry. She was certain the lone candle would flicker out before the night was over.

“October 15th, 1893…” she began, correctly stating the date. The hour hand crawled toward midnight while the sound of its smaller, swifter counterpart reverberated in Rosalind’s head with every second. It was also terribly difficult to enunciate — how annoying. She sighed, and began from the very beginning of their story. Perhaps it wasn’t the room’s chill that was causing the tightening in her throat. The back of her neck ached. 

“The Lutece Field entangled my quantum atoms with waves of light, allowing for safe measurement…” What a bastardization. The science was so precise, so intricate, and yet she was choosing layman’s terms. Fink would be delighted to share this information with his rats, planted within the Columbia Science Authority. She, after all, had no money to her name, and was at the mercy of her two principal funders. 

She shook her head and felt the back of her neck tighten, and realized the voxphone was now mainly black. Rosalind blinked several times, and the dots dissipated reluctantly. The tape whirred — another noise that dug through her temples. 

“Sounds familiar, Brother?” It wasn’t the humidity, or the cold draft from the open window, that caused her problems. She swallowed twice, struggling to push the saliva down her throat, and forced the bile away by sheer force of will. Brother — the man who was lying unconscious mere feet from her. She risked a glance at the red carpet, red with his blood, his hair, his shirt… Quickly, her head was forced back in position. 

She finished that voxphone quickly, and realized at the end that she didn’t even remember her own words. Some time during the recording, the black dots had returned with a vengeance, pulsing with the beat drumming in her mind, pulsing like the atoms had when she’d first met Robert. It wasn’t the activity that exhausted her; Rosalind recorded dozens of voxphones per day without much thought, but tonight, her heart was not into it.

There had been so much blood — his blood, her blood, their blood — he bled, he was most likely still bleeding, and he would bleed for days, she feared — and she was a physicist, not a physician, and the experiment had taken so much from them both. It was a success, it was a failure, it was a scientific experiment gone as wrong as it could have. None of their tests had wielded such an immediate, bloody response. 

He had bled until she had hooked the needle in her own vein, forcing her — their — blood back into him, whispering his name like a prayer, like a mantra, like... 

There was still the matter of the voxphones to attend to. She pushed the first one away and tugged a second closer to her. 

“October 15th, 1893,” she started again. This one was harder. Still, she had to record them as quickly as possible, so she pushed the emotion from her voice and struggled to put order to her thoughts. “You have been transfused, Brother, into a new reality…” On and on she spoke, only recording a few thoughts at a time. She doubted he would even be able to understand these later; he hadn’t even recognized her past the first few seconds in her dimension. She had brushed the blood from his nose and had whispered his name incessantly, begging him to remember who she was — who they were — but it had been in vain. 

Despite Rosalind’s blood, Robert had fainted within minutes of his arrival, and Rosalind had lost her composure. A scream had left through her throat as his body failed him, and she had fallen down with him. Her fingers had then trailed to his pulse — it had still been there, despite the odds. 

Zachary Comstock had begun to laugh, then, sipping his tea casually from his perch on Rosalind’s favourite armchair, as Rosalind and Robert bled together in front of him on the floor. She had not asked for his permission in bringing Robert over. He had found out, however. He always did.

The thunder brought her back to the present. She recorded a few more voxphones with her observations, from the first time she opened a tear into his universe to the moment when his knees struck her carpet. Dizziness swept through her when she recollected the way he bled; she lowered her face to the desk so that her cheek rested on the cold, varnished surface, though it gave her little respite. Her words had become slurred with exhaustion, with blood loss, with despair. “Brother, you seemed to stabilize, then. Perhaps unconsciousness has shielded you from the strain of crossing realities.” She stopped, and a humourless laugh left her lips. “Perhaps death has claimed you while I’ve recording these. Comstock has not lifted a finger to help us — although rumours say the prophet can perform miracles, I’ve yet to see one.” 

A hand appeared in her vision, stopping the tape from recording further. Rosalind blinked through the tears, feeling one drip over the bridge of her nose while the other slid down her temple. A dark brown suit appeared in her vision, and she stared blankly ahead, unwilling to meet the man’s eyes.

“This will do, child,” Comstock coldly said. Rosalind’s eyelids fluttered, but the pistol that had been pressed against her neck for the last hour finally left its spot. She watched as Comstock collected all of her voxphones before he threw the last tape on the floor. She heard his heel crush the fragile mechanism, contrasting with how carefully Comstock placed the rest in a box. They were to be stored at one of Fink’s laboratories. It had been their agreement prior to the experiment — Rosalind could record these thoughts for her own archives, but only could review them when alone, and with the prophet’s express permission. It wouldn’t be good for Columbia’s population to know of this — they may doubt Comstock’s prophecies if the truth was shared. 

When Comstock had laughed at Robert’s broken body, she had categorically refused to record anything else for him. Her discoveries would remain her own. Moments later, the gun at the base of her skull had made her change her mind. Comstock controlled her. He always had, and always would. 

As though he could read her mind, he calmly asked, “Again, Rosalind, who is Robert Lutece?”

“My twin brother.” Her voice was flat. She almost wished he’d pulled that trigger. “From the Sodom below.” 

“That is convincing enough, child. I do love tales of redemption.” Comstock had the audacity to chuckle, and placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder blade. His thumb flickered over the spot where he had held the gun, as a reminder of her duties. She felt her skin crawl, and she abruptly stood and took a step away, staring firmly ahead. 

The clock struck midnight, and the sounds only intensified Rosalind’s migraine. She was barely aware that Comstock had left her home, or that she had opened a bottle of whiskey taken from her desk drawer, or that it was now one thirty, or two, she couldn’t quite tell through the haze. She stumbled from the liquor cabinet toward the body on the floor, only then realizing how terrified she was. Her carpet was stained beyond repair, and so were his clothes… But he was breathing, although with some difficulty, and didn’t wake when Rosalind sank down on the floor beside him. His blood made the expensive carpet’s fabric slick, and Rosalind laid her cheek down on the driest patch she could find. Her fingers found his, and she squeezed them lightly.

She awoke an hour later, when Robert’s terrified screams jolted her awake.


End file.
